Alligators are awesome ... ants are amazingly abundant ... and aardvarks are amusingly awkward. Those are some of the lessons a child will learn from former preschool and kindergarten teacher Marcia Perry, a well-known Monterey artist whose color-splashed paintings adorn every adjacent page of "Here on Earth: An Animal Alphabet."

The children's book, hot off the presses of Pomegranate, a Portland, Ore.-based publishing company, is a nutritious blend of brain food and eye candy designed to help kids take their first baby steps toward learning to read.

Perry, 61, does it through alliteration and illustrations that take her young audience (and their parents) through every letter of the alphabet, leaving little doubt the letter "A" is very different in sound and purpose than the letter "B," which, she equates with "Beautiful Butterflies ... big, brawny, brown buffaloes, bumblebees and blue-footed boobies."

In Perry's life, "A" stands for art. She and fellow artist Meg Biddle are co-founders of the Youth Arts Collective, a nonprofit after-school art studio and mentoring program for high school and college-age artists.

The idea to write and illustrate an educational alphabet book has been percolating in her mind for several years, but Perry says the project wound up in a drawer in 2007 after overtures to about 10 different publishers went unrequited — a discouragement most authors have encountered.

"Our new board president, Jim Dultz, who spent his career as a Hollywood set designer for "The Muppets," took a look at what I had and said, 'Oh, you've got to get this book out there,'" she said. "Jim helped me clean up some of the writing, taught me how to use Photoshop and basically helped me create a solid book proposal to send out to publishers."

Her project caught the attention of Pomegranate owner Katie Burke, who emailed her immediately, worked out a contract and made the book a reality. Not only did Burke publish "Here on Earth," she also plans to turn Perry's whimsical paintings — airbrushed acrylic — into wall art for classrooms.

"I taught myself to do airbrush painting — I never went to art school," she said. "I got my college degree in Early Childhood Education and Development, and taught preschool and kindergarten for eight years.

"I adore little kids, and I taught a lot of children how to read using this kind of method — repetition of the sounds, with alliteration — but, all along I felt like so much of the material out there for kids was disappointing," she added. "It costs just as much to print bad art as it does to print good art, and ... well, 'A is for Apple' just doesn't get it."

Not surprisingly, the artwork came first. Perry created the painting that adorns the book cover — a peacock — six years ago, then started on the paintings that would become the alphabet pages: a cozy cat cured comfortably alongside a chameleon that changes colors constantly, and a crimson cardinal that catches curious caterpillars, for example.

Her final product is eye-popping.

"When I started doing art, I decided I was only going to create things that were beautiful," she said. "I think art is about truth and beauty. The truth isn't always pretty, and I really respect that kind of art, but I decided a long time ago that I wanted to try to create things that make people feel good."

Becoming a published artist made Perry feel so good that she's already completed a second children's book, which includes spectacular paintings of more than 90 species of sea creatures. That one currently is under consideration for publication by Pomegranate.

The official book launch for "Here on Earth" is scheduled from 2-5p.m. on May 26 at the Youth Arts Collective, 472 Calle Principal in Monterey. Several other book signings are planned in the coming weeks.